


The Possibility of Belief

by grey_sw (grey)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Injury Recovery, Kindness, Secrets, Self-Acceptance, Self-Becoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 12:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12841230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey/pseuds/grey_sw
Summary: In the aftermath of Altissia, Ignis rewards Prompto's kindness with a secret.





	The Possibility of Belief

Prompto knocks at the door of the room First Secretary Claustra gave them, shifting the tray he's holding to his left hand. There's no answer. 

_Guess Gladio's not back yet_ , he thinks, and opens the door anyway. Ignis is sitting on the bed, facing the window. The day is bright beyond him, clear blue sky with a hint of cloud, and Prompto can almost imagine that he's watching the seabirds, or maybe looking down onto the wreck of the city below.

The bandages over his eyes say otherwise.

"Hey, Iggy," Prompto says. Ignis doesn't answer, doesn't turn away from the window. "I brought you some medicine." 

He makes it halfway to the bed before Ignis finally reacts. Even then, it's only to turn a little, his left ear tracking Prompto across the room. It's as unerring as his gaze used to be, and something about that makes premature hope spark inside Prompto's heart.

"Prompto," Ignis says, and Prompto remembers: _you should always greet people when they enter a room, Your Highness_. "You're back. Where's Gladio?"

"Dunno," he says. _Don't care,_ he thinks, but he keeps that to himself. Ignis doesn't need to know. 

"Hm." There's a long pause in which Prompto waits for Ignis to say something else. "Come sit down, then."

Prompto sits on the bed facing Ignis, placing his tray carefully on top of the covers. Three pill bottles, two bottles of eyedrops, a glass of water, a square of fresh, clean gauze. He's lucky to have talked his way into this much, even for Ignis, because triage in the ruins below has gotten ruthless. But he might've said something like _he's a Hero of Altissia, okay?_ to the First Secretary, and it might have actually worked.

"Here," he says, opening the first bottle. Ignis holds his hand out. Prompto shakes two pills out of the bottle and presses them into it, but Ignis makes no move to take them. 

"Antibiotics," Prompto says. A moment goes by. "Please, you gotta..."

"All right, then." Ignis pops the pills into his mouth, swallows. Prompto passes him the water, and Ignis only spills it a little as he takes it, muttering a quiet curse. He drinks half of it at a draught and then holds the glass out again, waiting.

Prompto puts it back on the tray, and opens the second pill bottle. "These, too. For the pain."

Ignis closes his hand. "No."

"Iggy--"

" _No_ , Prom. I need to be able to think."

Prompto wants to cry. He almost says _you don't need to think right now, okay? You just need to take these and get better_ , but he chokes it back just in time. It's nothing Ignis wants to hear, and the first part of it must be tearing him up already.

"What if Noct wakes up?" Ignis adds, and Prompto winces. He hopes Ignis can't hear him doing it. "I need to be here for him."

_**He** needs to be here **for you**_ is another thing Prompto doesn't say. He opens the third bottle instead, takes out three of the blue pills. 

"How about these, then?" he asks. Ignis inclines his head, an unspoken question. "Souped-up Advil. I, uh... I kinda thought you might not want the other ones."

Ignis falls silent at that. Prompto can feel him figuring the odds, asking himself if he can trust this. The pills could be anything, including the ones Prompto just put back in the bottle; a blind man would never know. But after a second Ignis takes them, knocks his head back, and swallows them dry, one after the other.

"My thanks."

"Yeah." He lets that hang in the air for a second. "I got you some eyedrops, too. And we need to change your bandages." 

"Very well." 

Ignis is still as a statue beneath Prompto's shaking hands. He feels awkward in comparison, too clumsy to unwind the gauze wrapped behind Ignis' head without hurting him, but no one else is here to do it. Gladio won't even look at Iggy anymore. Prompto ditched him at the table in Weskham's temporary mess hall not two hours ago, because Gladio had said _they're setting up homes here, homes for the wounded,_ and if he hadn't jumped up to leave he might've punched Gladio instead. 

He's pretty sure that wouldn't end well, but part of him thinks it'd end a hell of a lot better than putting Ignis Scientia in a fucking _home_. Hopefully walking out on Gladio will make that clear, because if it doesn't, they're in trouble. If Ignis ever hears it he'll gut Gladio like a plump barramundi, "wounded" or not... and if Noct hears about it he might do something even worse than that. Prompto's not sure why he's this damn dense about it, but it seems like Gladio doesn't get just how much Specs matters to Noctis, even though it's (blindingly, he tries and fails not to think) obvious. 

Just like it's obvious that Ignis will kill himself if they leave him behind -- if _Noct_ leaves him behind. For a second Prompto can see it (knives, of course, knives to open his veins, maybe five or ten minutes after they walk away), and it makes his heart twist to think of it. But he's also got the bandages unwound, and maybe that makes his heart twist inside of him, too.

Fine. If Gladio won't help Ignis, Prompto will just have to help twice as hard.

"Okay," he says, once he's gotten himself back together. "Eyedrops."

Ignis turns his head upward. His remaining eye is cloudy, now, and the ring of his iris has gone a pale white, too; there isn't any green in it anymore. When Prompto reaches over it with the dropper, there's no reaction at all. Prompto's always been an optimistic kind of guy, but he doesn't think Ignis is ever going to see again. _Maybe with time_ is accurate, sure, but it's also the sort of thing doctors say when there isn't anything kinder. He still puts in the eyedrops with care: the stuff in the first bottle will keep Iggy's eye dilated, to give the damage a better chance to heal. The second bottle is some kind of oil, to keep the first drops from drying it out. Ignis winces under his breath, blinks his eye, and some of the oil leaks out. He raises his hand, but Prompto beats him to wiping it away, so he swats gently at Prompto's glove instead. 

"Enough," he grumbles.

"Sorry. The bandage... I gotta change it."

"Fine, then." 

Prompto takes the old square of gauze down carefully, willing it not to stick. Ignis clenches his jaw as it pulls free. His wounds are still raw, a wide swath of glistening red around the eye the doctors took out, and the stuff smeared on the back of the bandage makes Prompto's stomach do one of Ignis' front flips. He folds up the bandage and squeezes his hand shut around it, before he can start thinking too much about that having been part of Iggy's face. 

Prompto folds the new square of gauze into the right size and shape, stalls for a moment, and then presses it into place. Ignis' hands curl into fists, and his breath hisses slowly in and out through his teeth, but he still sits ramrod straight as Prompto winds the bandages back around his head. He doesn't cry, doesn't gasp, doesn't make a sound. 

Prompto wonders -- and not for the first time -- just what the Citadel did to Iggy to make him like this, endlessly stoic and strong. Or maybe Ignis did it to himself; perhaps he made himself a weapon, a dagger for his Prince, and now he doesn't know how to stop cutting. Prompto doesn't know the story, and he probably never will. Ignis doesn't talk about his past, except for when he does, and even then he's almost always talking about Noctis.

_You better wake up,_ Prompto thinks to himself, and then realizes with a start that he's crying. _Please, Noct. Please wake up. You gotta help me to help Iggy._

He tries to swallow it, but it's all too much. He's shaking all of a sudden, and Ignis is way too clever to miss that, even if he can't see it. His arm snakes out, inching forward, to find him and to pull him close. "No, Prompto," he breathes. "Don't cry, please don't. Not for me. It'll be all right..."

It's _not_ all right. It's not. _Prompto_ should be comforting _Ignis_ , although it occurs to him that maybe he is: comforting is what always comforts Iggy, and he's left with no other outlet for it, not until Noct wakes up. But Prompto wants to comfort, too, so he hugs Ignis tight -- just as tight as he can, because he wants him to feel how much he's loved -- and buries his face in the soft silk of his collar.

They're like that for a long moment, frozen in time, and then Ignis tightens his arm to hug him back even closer. 

"Oh, Prom," he sighs again. Ignis' breathing slows and steadies, in and out against Prompto's shoulder. Vulnerability bleeds out of him step by step, until he's sitting up straight and proper again, like always. Then he turns his head down against Prompto's hair and puts his lips close to his ear, mindful of his bandages.

"Prompto," he whispers. "May I tell you a secret?"

Ignis Scientia keeps the Crown's secrets; he doesn't ever tell them. Prompto knows that, and it's enough to make him freeze, to make the instant they're in seem momentous. But Ignis is waiting for him, and there's only one answer he can give.

"Y-yeah. Of course."

Ignis squeezes him again. 

"This is my destiny," Ignis tells him, soft but clear as day. "It always has been. The Chosen King's blind magician... it was only ever going to be me." He sighs again, into Prompto's ear, and then there's moisture against Prompto's cheek. Maybe it's the oil. "This is... difficult, Prom. I can't-- can't be of use anymore." His voice catches, as if saying that wounds him deeper than whatever took his sight. "But I have to bear it, for Noct. For all of us." 

He pauses, collects himself, sums things up.

"This hurts, but I know it's all part of becoming who I want to be." 

Something opens inside Prompto on hearing that, like shutters that had blocked out the sun. It's a longing he didn't even know he had, and it comes to him with the sound of a finger snap. He hears the oddest echo of _that's it!_ , and he wonders for a single, insane moment if this is what it's like to be inside Ignis' head. Is this what it's like to be stone-cold certain of something you've never even thought of before? It's wonderful and terrible, like the first time Prompto had ever seen an iron giant, wide-eyed in the passenger seat while Noct stammered _fuck this fuck this fuck this_ and slammed the Regalia into reverse. 

" _Oh,_ " Prompto says, and then "Iggy, you... this whole time..." Then his heart squeezes inside of him with a new revelation, something he'd never dared to dream. It makes him feel selfish, stupid, _shitty_ to ask this now, but he can't stop. He has to know. 

He has to know, right now.

"Iggy, wait. Do I-- do I have a destiny too?"

Ignis laughs, or maybe sobs, just a soft puff of air against his ear. He presses his lips against Prompto's temple. The white of his clean new bandage catches against a bright fringe of hair, but he seems to feel no pain.

"Yes," he says. "Yes, Prom. Of course you do."

Prompto wants to believe, wants to belong. He wants it so much he's pretty sure the Hexatheon can see his dorky, desperate longing from _space_. So much that the mere possibility of belief silences the voice inside of him -- the cruel, doubting voice that says he's always been special, but _not_ in a good way -- and makes him shiver with sudden chill.

"Oh," he says, again. Like a total idiot. 

"Oh, indeed," agrees Ignis, as if that's all there is to say. Then he lays another rare kiss against Prompto's forehead, the kind he gives out when somebody royal and precious has a fever. "Don't tell Noct, okay? About me, about knowing it would happen. You'll break his heart."

"I won't. I promise." 

"Good."

**Author's Note:**

> During chapter 14 there's a painting of the Chosen King and his retainers outside the Throne Room... and the figure that looks like Ignis is blind in it. He and Noct talk about growing up beneath those paintings, so I can't imagine that Ignis of all people would've missed its significance... he must've known, or at least suspected, maybe since he was six years old. ("Now enter into Reflection, that the Light of Providence shine within.") 
> 
> Prophecy really fucking sucks.
> 
> I'm sorry.


End file.
